Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Gunsmithing buttplate/ recoil pad angle?

when installing a buttplate or recoil pad on a new stock do you cut the stock at a slight angle to making mounting the gun slightly easier, I do on all my bird guns , but may not be necessary on a rifle.

Right or wrong I cut mine 90 degrees to the bore.

thats what i'm thinking so recoil will be straight back, sorry about terminology i'm referring to pitch.

What JSTUART said.

And as recoil goes up, so does my pickyness of pitch angle.

I'm flogging on a model 70 replacement stock right now, just touching it up to flatten it for a new pad. There's a little drop to the pre-70 butt, the final angle looks to be around 86 degrees from the bore, about, the fat side on top. About halfway between matching the butt drop and the bore. Don't have a finder in hand, but it's not 90 to the barrel. Call it "mild overbite?"
My GUESS is, a little bit of angle versus totally square helps mounting for some, plus upon recoil it might even ramp the gun down on your shoulder, meaning less cheek slap.
To ease mounting, what I will do is round off the upper corner of the pad.
Normally, I just try to match the existing angle unless it mounts poorly, feels wrong, or beats me up. And I usually take more off the top and leave more on the bottom, get it closer to square/bore. But I don't think I have any "underbite" long arms at all.

so you are saying the 86 degree angle makes the stock longer at the toe (bottom) and shorter at the heel (top). this is how I do shotgun stocks.

Curious about this myself. I've always cut them at 90 degrees to the boreline, but wondered if it was correct or not. I've checked a few factory butts and they have all been a bit different, but usually close to 90 except for some of the older vintage big bore rifles.

The pitch should aprox 10 degrees. If you want to have the dog snot stomped out of you just under cut or make the stock cut square, for a gun over 12 ga recoil. Now you can get away with a low recoil cartridge like a 243, but if you climb over the fence towards high recoil you modify the recoil by cutting the heel slightly shorter than the toe. As Gunscrew and Sheister said.
Pad cut to the angle to match the stock line....Why a pad jig comes in handy with a flat bed mounted and motorized sander.

For a stock with a parallel comb, as many modern centerfire rifles seem to have, 10 deg pitch would seem pretty excessive. With early bolt actions such as the pre-64 M70 and Rem 721, with steeply sloping combs, that is probably closer to what you'll find.

If you happen to be fitting a woman, greater pitch is called for. Women have (thank you, Jesus) breasts, and it is painful to shoot a gun that digs the toe into your chest on every shot.

The driver of pitch in a gunstock, shotgun or rifle, is that the butt bears evenly in the shoulder pocket with the gun mounted normally/correctly, not some formula or prescription. A bit of cast at toe may be much more comfortable for ladies or thick chested men.